Rhetorical Strategies and Gender in Marinetti`s Futurist Manifesto

Rhetorical Strategies and Gender in Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto
Cinzia Blum
Italica, Vol. 67, No. 2. (Summer, 1990), pp. 196-211.
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Rhetorical Strategies and Gender in Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto T
hough the importance of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's contributions to avant-garde aesthetics has been a subject of controversy
since the very beginnings of the Futurist movement, critics generally
aclznowledge the innovation of what Marinetti himself called "l'arte
di far manifesti." Most recently, in a remarkable study on the "language of rupture" of the avant-garde movements prior to World War
I, Marjorie Perloff locates the originality of the Futurist manifesto in
its hybrid, multifaceted nature. As Perloff notes, the genealogy of the
Futurist manifesto can be traced back to the agonistic mode of discourse of the nineteenth-century political manifesto, and to the programmatic statements of aesthetic renovation, modernity, nationalism, and heroism articulated in the manifestos of other turn-of-thecentury movements. But the Italian Futurist manifestos differ from
their precursors because of "their brash refusal to remain in the expository or critical corner, their understanding that the group pronouncement, sufficiently aestheticized, can, in the eyes of the mass
audience, all but take the place of the promised art work."' Indeed,
Marinetti's famous first manifesto, "Fondazione e Manifesto del Fut u r i s m ~ , "which marks the founding of the movement in 1909, also
marks the creation of a new genre straddling poetic and theoretical
discourse-a collective statement directed at a mass audience, in
which the articulation of an aesthetic and political program is transformed into a literary c ~ n s t r u c t . ~
The Futurist manifesto qualifies as a genre of rupture in two ways.
As the theoretical and propagandistic arena of the Futurist "global"
revolution, the manifesto is the springboard of revolutionary principles: the breakdown of barriers between the individual arts, the destruction of syntax, and the elimination of the psychologizing literary
~ u b j e c tAnd
. ~ as an art work itself, the manifesto subverts traditional
codes, obliterating boundaries between different genres and expressive registers, and occasionally exemplifies the new antigrammatical and anti-syntactical model4
An aesthetic of rupture which subverts literary conventions and
linguistic contraints may involve the undermining of hierarchical,
centralizing ordering systems predicated upon a unitary, authoritative speaking and thinking subject-in other words, the mise en question of traditional assumptions about subjectivity, and about the representability of self and reality. Traditionally, the studies of Italian
Futurism which emphasize the novelty and importance of its formal
experimentation have tended to avoid the terrain of ideological
inquiry.' Some apologetic studies touch this terrain only cursorily,
to posit an unproblematic congruence between the formal and the
ideological realms. That approach may lead the reader to unwarranted
conclusions concerning the ideological stakes of the Futurist aesthetic r e v o l ~ t i o n . ~
It is important to recognize that anxieties about fragmentation of
identity and confusion of codes lie at the psychological roots of Futurist experimentation. The manifesto "I1 teatro futurista sintetico"
offers an example: "la realta ci vibra attorno assalendoci con raffiche
di frammenti di fatti combinati tra loro, incastrati gli uni negli altri,
confusi, aggrovigliati, caotizzati" (TIF, 177).The diction in this passage posits a condition of threatening confusion: "assalendoci con raffiche," in particular, conjures up a hostile reality at war against a besieged subject. Still, it must be emphasized that the ideological
underside of Futurist experimentation reverses doubts about subjectivity and representation into an acritical, boisterous affirmation of
the epistemological and artistic powers of the "multiplied" Futurist
man. The iconoclastic attack on linguistic conventions is governed
by an effort to control the life of matter-a fantasy of omniscience
and omnipotence:
Oggi, pih che mai, ,Ion fa dell'arte se non chi fa della guerra. Degne di
gloria non appaiono che le fronti erette a violentare il Mistero, a gettare
la sfida verso le mostruosita tentatrici dell'Impossibile. (TIF, 28)
Solo il poeta asintattico e dalle parole slegate potra penetrare l'essenza
della materia e distruggere la sorda ostilita che la separa da noi. (TIF,
521
The object of the artist's quest is expressed in terms of negativity and
impossibility ("mostruosita," "Impossibile," "sorda ostilita," "separa"). In the first pssage, the marked choice of negative periphrases
to affirm the artist's power reinforces the effect of the lexical choice.
But this semantics of negativity and impossibility is countered by the
semantics of sexual aggression: the Futurist artist is portrayed as a
warrior with his head raised to violate, or rape, the mystery of reality,
and as a poet with new linguistic powers to penetrate the hostile es-
sence of matter. The sexual overtones of these passages cast the Futurist epistemological and aesthetic model into a gendered situation,
which sets up an aggressive, virile subject against a feminized reality
to be conquered or destroyed.
Throughout Marinetti's writing we find various instances of this
ideological construction which I call a "fiction of power". The Futurist manifestos, for example, valorize avant-garde artistic practices,
technology, war, and virility, and concomitantly devaluate passeism,
pacifism, and femininity. Marinetti thereby produces a fiction of the
subject's power as a violent, compensatory response to the sense of
crisis widespread in the modernist era.
Gender plays a key role in this ideological construction and is afundamental aspect of Futurist writing which has hitherto received scant
attention. A critical perspective focusing on gender issues offers powerful analytical leverage to the purpose of evaluating the ideological
valences of the Futurist revolution. In particular, the mapping out of
femininity in Marinetti's manifestos provides a sort of blueprint for
the Futurist male-centered project. Such a project involves three logically successive steps: 1/ marlzing boundaries and setting up objectives to be destroyed; 2 ) constructing the text as a site for violent action; 31 creating new myths.
In the first step-the staging of barricades-the feminine principle
is associated with everything Futurism is supposed to fight against:
all past traditions in art (particularly sentimental poetry], the parliamentary system, pacifism, as well as constrictive mores and institutions that lead to the country's decadence while stifling virile energy
and courage. For instance, in "Uccidiamo il Chiaro di Luna! ", Marinetti writes:
Si i nostri nervi esigono la guerra e disprezzano la donna, poiche noi temiamo che le braccia supplici s'intreccino alle nostre ginocchia, la mattina della partenza! . . . Che mai pretendono le donne, i sedentari, gli
invalidi, gli ammalati e tutti i consiglieri prudenti! ITIF, 1.5)
The manifesto relies crucially on a rhetorical strategy that brings gender into relation with political and aesthetic issues, a strategy in
which femininity worlzs as a mark of impotence, disease, and fragmentation attached to those mental attitudes that contradict Futurist
hubris. In fact, the glorification of the Futurist artistic power is shored
up with a polemical discourse which is the ground for figures of sexual
degeneration: impotence, castration, and effeminacy are frequently
used as critical categories to dismiss peremptorily other artistic and
political tendencies. For example, Proustian introspective writing
("Psicologismo semi-futurista alla parigina") is stigmatized as "frammentario, effeminato, ambiguo" (TIF, 1731; pacifist sentiments are
contemptuously attacked as a form of "castration" of the race;' and
academic culture is deplored as "castration" of genius.8
This kind of rhetoric also recurs in the writings of Marinetti's followers. Mario Carli's "Arte vile e arte virile," in particular, is entirely
constructed around the topos of sexual degeneration. Encamped in a
fortress of "healthy virility" ("sana e rumorosa vitalita futurista"),
the Futurist artist launches a virulent attack against the pathological,
effeminate "other": ". . . l'artista immerso nella donnesca aristocrazia del suo ingegno, sdegnoso di rimboccarsi le maniche per una partita di boxe, e preoccupato solo della delicata sottigliezza delle sue immagini, fragili come ricami di nuvole." According to Carli's
diagnosis, almost all of the non-Futurist artists are wretched or sexually degenerate: "Se non sono linfatici, sono acidi; se non sono acidi,
sono nevrotici; se non sono nevrotici, sono p e d e r a ~ t i . " ~
The obsessive preoccupation with gender distinction which lies
beneath the Futurist fiction of virile power is most explicitly expressed in Francesco Cangiullo's "La scoperta del sostantivo anat o m i c ~o del sesso in esso," a text which foregrounds the relation of
language to sexuality. Cangiullo's declared concern is "femminilizzare la Donna e maschilizzare il Maschio." The fundamental argument is that sexual perversion may result from linguistic perversion,
that is from the practice of naming parts of female anatomy with masculine nouns and vice versa:
Insomma, si pub sapere che razza di giuoco buffo e codesto delle cose
femminili che debbono avere sostantivi maschili e, diciamo, dei cosi
maschili che debbono avere sostantivi femminili! [. . .] Gli uomini di
sensibilita normale-e saranno sempre piu-a furia di chiamare a1 maschile quelle parti del corpo umano femminile, possono suggestionarsi
a1 punto da n o n sentire piu la donna. E viceversa per le donne dalla
istessa sensibilita, le quali, continuando a chiamare a1 femminile
quelle parti del corpo umano maschile, un giorno n o n avvertiranno piu
emphases)
l ' u ~ r n o(Author's
.~~
Cangiullo's solution is to straighten out the ambiguities of grammatical gender, to close the "arbitrary gap" between signifier and signified, so as to exorcise sexual deviance. Although other linguistic rules
can and must be subverted in the name of artistic freedom, or rather,
of the artist's power, grammatical gender is the object of reactionary,
homophobic concerns, of an effort to restore the oldest conception of
language-that of the intrinsic relation between signifier and signified.
This is one of a number of strategies aimed at a sharply dichotomized, proscriptive definition of gender distinction. In particular,
Marinetti advocated the masculinization of social ethos through
war-a catalyst of virilizing male bonds-and through an educational
system structured to protect boys from feminine influence. One
might observe that there is a slippery boundary between these homosocial bonds and homoerotic desire.'' Indeed, one can identify a
strain of homoeroticism displaced onto the machine, the great fetish
of Futurist mythology-an "other" which offers a reassuring mirror
image of the subject's desire for power. Furthermore, the homoerotic
underside of violent misogyny-not so obvious in the manifestoscomes to the surface in Mafarka il futurista, a text which dramatizes
the perviousness and uncertainty of the subject's borders and affective valences.
Ultimately, homophobia, gynophobia, and correlated homoeroticism are to be traced back to an instability of the parameters, codes,
and material conditions upon which an individual sense of identity
and power is grounded. While the manifesto's hybrid nature instantiates the disruption of codes in modern chaotic, fragmentary reality,
the rhetoric and thematics of gender strive to establish more rigid gender codes which provide a foundation for the integrity of the subject
and for an unwavering code of authority and subordination. In short,
barriers between genres can be broken; gender barriers cannot.
One might say that the polarization of gender functions as the bedrock upon which other barricades are erected. Marinetti's writing (especially in manifestos and polemical texts) seems to be controlled by
the necessity of producing a rigidly binary construction of reality.
This tendency was apparent from the very beginning of the Futurist
movement, especially with "Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo,"
the first declaration of a war to be engaged on all fronts in order to
break with the stifling past and bring Italy to the forefront of modern
progress. With a striking combination of allegory, Dionysiac intoxication, and brash oratory, Marinetti railed against the worship of tradition while celebrating an anti-sentimental, virile art, and the worship of strength, heroism, and courage. The following are examples
of the peremptory divisions drawn by the manifesto:
9. Noi vogliamo glorificare la guerra-sola igiene del mondo--il milit a r i s m ~ il
, patriottismo, il gesto distruttore dei libertari, le belle idee
per cui si muore e il disprezzo della donna.
10. Noi vogliamo distruggere i musei, le biblioteche, le accademie d'ogni specie, e combattere contro il moralismo, il femmlnismo e contro
ogni vilta opportunistica o utilitaria. [TIF, 11I
This binary structuring of reality is bound up with the structuring
of a new religion. Particularly in "La nuova religione-morale della velocita," the act of setting up boundaries between the pure and the im-
pure clearly displays a religious value. The new cult of speed, in fact,
is proposed as an alternative to a no-longer effective Christian morality, which has lost "divinity," that is, power to control man's instincts and to further his progress:
La morale cristiana difese la struttura fisiologica dell'uomo dagli eccessi della sensualita. Modero i suoi istinti e li equilibro. La morale futurist~difendera l'uomo dalla decomposizione determinata dalla lentezza, dal ricordo, dall'analisi, dal riposo e dall'abitudine. L'energia
umana centuplicata dalla velocita dominera il Tempo e lo Spazio. (TIF,
130; author's emphases!
La velocita avendo per essenza la sintesi intuitiva di tutte le forze in
movimento, e naturalmente pura. La lentezza, avendo per essenza l'analisi razionale di tutte le stanchezze in riposo, e naturalmente immonda. Dopo la distruzione dell'antico bene e dell'antico male, noi
creiamo un nuovo bene: la velocita, e un nuovo male: la lentezza. (TIF,
132; author's emphasesl
Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytical and anthropological studies on
abjection offer a theoretical framework to explain this rhetorical
strategy and, more generally, the pervasive imagery of defilement,
corruption, and decay in Marinetti's texts. In particular, we will refer
to Powers of Horror, where anti-semitism, rituals of defilement, phobias, and the subject's repudiation of femininity are traced back to the
fundamental psychic process of the subject's accession to meaning
and identity. l 2 According to Kristeva, the primal process of separation
from, and rejection of the maternal entity results in repugnance, or
abjection-a corporeal symptom or sign, which serves to defend the
subject's power of identification. The abjection of corporeal waste
and, in general, of that which traverses the boundary of the self, goes
along with that power as its "other."'"eferring
to primitive societies where defilement is synonymous with supreme danger or great
evil, Kristeva points out that the ritualization of defilement is accompanied by a strong concern for separating the sexes: "[Women], apparently put in the position of passive objects, are none the less felt to
be wily powers, 'baleful schemers' from whom rightful beneficiaries
must protect themselves" (70).Defilement rituals and behavior prohibitions are supposed to ward off the danger, and, by setting up separations, they lay the foundations for a social order. Such rituals and
the concomitant abjection of the feminine are traced back to the lack
of "a central authoritarian power" (70).
These observations offer some insights into the note of sacrality
which is often sounded in Marinetti's texts and cast light on the workings of his misogynist strategies as a response to the crisis of the cultural order. Such a response involves marking off boundaries along
gender lines between a virile self and a feminine or feminized other-a
structuring of reality which sets up an enemy to be ostracized and
fought. We are thus led to another fundamental strategy of the
manifesto-the second step of the Futurist project: the construction
of the text as a site for violence, in which woman often figures as a
target.
Violence with its derivatives-strife, war, destruction-is a crucial
thematic focus and a most exploited semantic field in Marinetti's
writing. War, in particular, is celebrated as a natural phenomenonelan vital, "world's hygiene," a necessary regenerating, purifyingprocess, and is aestheticized as spectacle-an exhilarating expenditure
of energies. In the representation of war, the spectacle of human suffering is upstaged by the beautiful performance of the machine: "Notai [. . .] come la volata lucente e aggressiva di un cannone arroventato
dal sole e dal fuoco accelerato renda quasi trascurabile lo spettacolo
della carne umana straziata e morente" (TIF, l 0 l ] . l 4Furthermore,
pain is replaced by orgasmic pleasure: in fact, war is repeatedly fantasized as violent defloration or forceful and fecund copulation. The
following, which appears at the end of "Uccidiamo il Chiaro di
Luna!", is one of the most disturbing erotic scenarios evoked by the
theme of battle: "Ecco la furibonda copula della battaglia, vulva
gigantesca irritata dalla foia del coraggio, vulva informe che si
squarcia per offrirsi meglio a1 terrific0 spasimo della vittoria imminente! E nostra la vittoria . . ." (TIF, 221.
But we have already seen that as the crucible for the molding of
the omnipotent "uomo d'acciaio" war is generally pitched against
woman (TIF, 15). If war means man's liberation from woman's enfeebling, enthralling influence and from the obsession with lust, how do
we explain the fact that the feminine body is also conjured up to personify war in scenes of sexual violence? One possible answer is that
such imagery, by pairing fighting and sex, death and pleasure, constructs a picture of war as desirable, thus performing a propagandistic
function.'" A more interesting line of discussion is one that aims at
identifying the common ground upon which the equation womanwar is posited. The attribute "informe" provides a clue to a less obvious link between the vehicle and the tenor of the metaphor, pointing to an unarticulated vision of war as shapeless chaos: lack of form
is the negative property shared by woman and battle.
Three journal entries in Marinetti's recently published Taccuini
lend support to this interpretation. One passage defines battle as a
"bordello," a term which means brothel, and also mess, chaos: "Sensazioni di bordello. Zeppo e confuso. Rumore. Andirivieni. Tutto il
non previsto. Tutto il disordine e tutta la fretta. Vince il disordine piu
energico che contiene un'aggressiva piu forte."'"his
passage may
be read as a gloss to the accumulation of fragmentary, chaotic perceptions in Marinetti's representations of battle."
The products of the brothel-like chaos of war-rubble, refuse, excrement, decomposition-are explicitly linked with femininity in
another entry, in which Marinetti records his impressions at the sight
of his female dog, Gaby, and of a young girl searching mountains of
putrescent refuse and carrion: "Gaby e felice di dare l'assalto a quelle
montagne di fetori. S'incontra lassh con una bambina goriziana che
passa anche lei le giornate a frugare nel letame sterco fango e immondizie. Cosa cerca? Cio che le donne cercano nella vita, i detriti i frantumi" (61).The feminine, often identified with passivity, pacifism,
and romantic love, is here associated with war and its products in a
relationship predicated by verbs that connote activity ("frugare,"
"cercare") and aggression ("dare l'assalto"). The fragmented, decaying matter linked with the feminine may be viewed as the abject matter, to use Kristeva's term, that traverses the boundary of the self, both
defining its margins and undermining its integrity.
Woman appears as the bearer of the sign of castration in another
emblematic moment of the Taccuini, in which Marinetti recounts
the episode of a young girl exposing her genitals at the beach: her "piccola vulva" is described as a "semiaperta ferita perpendicolare dalle
labbra cicatrizzate" (272).From a psychoanalytical perspective, one
may argue that woman, as the image of formlessness, or "lack," is
cathected by existential anxieties which are sustained by castration
anxieties. In other words, the feminine threat stands for the disempowerment of modern man in a rapidly changing world which baffles
existing ethical and epistemological codes. In order to exorcize this
threat and flesh out the Futurist fiction of male power, the manifesto
repeatedly displays the feminine body in a violent act of sexual/verbal
subjugation.
Returning to the erotic metaphor of battle, we can assert that sexual violence provides a model for a wished-for relationship between
the subject and his world: the subjugation of a "shapeless" (feminine)
object by a powerful (male)subject. These considerations can also be
extended to the manifesto's aesthetic of violent rupture. Marinetti's
texts are a locus of aggression and violence, not merely on the thematic, but also on the syntactic level: his poetics of distruzione della
sintassi, paroliberismo, immaginazione senza fili, aeropoesia attack
linguistic conventions to produce syntactic violence. The ultimate
target is the old "I" of traditional literature, "sottoposto a una logica
e a una saggezza spaventose" (TIF, 50): "Noi distruggiamo sistematicamente 1'10 letterario perche si sparpagli nella vibrazione universale,
e giungiamo ad esprimere l'infinitamente piccolo e le agitazioni
molecolari" (TIF, 100).
The epistemological implications of this revolutionary stance are
less iconoclastic than it might at first appear. In fact, the scattering
("sparpagliamento") of the self in the universe (brought about by the
fast pace of modern life) is presented as a means to a more powerful
unity freed from the limits of human nature: "Vittoria del nostro io
sui perfidi complotti del nostro Peso, che vuole assassinare a tradimento la nostra velocita trascinandola in un buco d'immobilita. Velocita = sparpagliamento + condensazione delllIo. Tutto lo spazio
percorso da un corpo si condensa in questo stesso corpo" (TIF, 136137; author's emphases).Destroying the "I" of passeist literature, the
Futurist subject disperses himself to penetrate the molecular life of
matter, and, with aeropoesia, rises as a super "I" propelled by mechanical wings to control immense spaces in the totalizing, both detached and dominating perspective allowed by the airplane.18
Just as the self is not actually dispersed in the Futurist imaginary
universe, the subject is not lostlfragmented in the chain and texture
of Marinetti's signifiers. Even at its most experimental, Marinetti's
writing displays some mechanisms of ~ u t u r e ,which
'~
beget the subject's unity and ability to produce meaning: glosses that explicate the
meaning of obscure aspects of the text; mathematical signs that arrange the elements of discourse according to a precise logical
systemj20and parentheticindications of tempo that direct the reading
pace. Like the subject of idealist cognition theory, the Futurist subject
is hypostatized as a self-assured center of perception and representation. This self-present, "condensed" subject regards poetic language as an instrument of intuition (in Marinetti's words, "il prolungamento lirico e trasfigurato del nostro magnetism0 animale" [TIF,
104]),which must be freed from the hindrance of syntax as an instrument of logic and used to conquer reality: "Metteremo in mot0 le parole in liberta che rompono i limiti della letteratura marciando verso
la pittura, la musica, l'arte dei rumori e gettando un meraviglioso
ponte tra la parola e l'oggetto reale" (TIF, 141).
As this passage clearly indicates, the Futurist attack on linguistic
conventions, its destruction of the symbolic, is actually governed by
a mimetic desire to master the life of matter, "to penetrate it and
know its vibrations" (TIF, 1051. Even the typographic revolution is
fundamentally a mimetic device and a means to gain absolute control
over the interpretation of the text.21While the rapidly changing reality of the modern industrialized world subverts the traditional way
of life and the old parameters of interpretation, the Futurist project
is to destroy in order to resymbolize, to re-affirm mastery over that
which threatens to move beyond the control of language.
Ultimately, no true ideological conflict exists between the misogynist rhetoric of gender and the gestures of formal disruption: in both
cases, the fundamental ideological drive is not to subvert the phallogocentrism of the old symbolic order, but to produce a reassuring
representation of self, founded on exclusive opposition and on the devaluation of otherness. The declared destruction of the literary "I"
does not involve the deconstruction of the unitary subject, but its
"multiplication," its transformation into a new all-powerful one. Accordingly, modern reality in the Futurist manifesto is not, as in other
texts, a problematic world of contradictions to explore; it is, instead,
a source of new myths to celebrate-a world to colonize and subjugate
in a self-assertive, self-aggrandizing enterprise.
Just as Marinetti's syntactic destruction is coextensive with a reconstructive effort, so the theme of destructive violence is inextricably bound up with the construction of new myths predicated on the
terrain of modernity-the third step of the Futurist project: the utopia
of the multiplied, metallicized man, who will be immunized against
the disease of love; the celebration of technological progress-life in
the industrial city, the "electric" war; and the exaltation of the allpowerful, but controllable machine, which replaces woman as the
ideal of beauty and as the object of man's narcissistic love.
By focusing on the rhetorical function of gender and on the recurrent use of erotic imagery, it is possible to investigate the complicity
between the apparently contradictory themes of warldestruction and
progresslcreation. Marinetti's most paradigmatic and illuminating
articulation of the idea of (male)creativity was not given in a manifesto, but in the "explosive novel" 8 Anime in una bomba (1919),
where the central idea of phallic power is expressed in a series of formulas or multiplied analogies:
Formule
MEMBRO VIRILE = sverginare - vulva - fecondazione - baci sangue,
ecc.
STANTUFFO = andare venire - caldaia - industria - vapore, ecc.
PRUA = navigare - mare vento - commercio - schiuma, ecc.
ARATRO = aprire - terra - agricoltura - linfa, ecc.
SHRAPNEL = spaccare - corpo nemico - guerra - lagrime sangue,
ecc.
VOCE PENNA SCALPELLO = creare spirito - arte - h e , ecc.
BISTURI = anatomizzare - corpo amico - chirurgia - pus - salute o
morte, ecc. ITIF, 8381
The first analogical chain refers to the action of fecundating defloration. The phallic power thus evoked is then both projected on and
multiplied by the subsequent chains (inthemselves marked by patent
sexual connotations), so that it is set up as the paradigm or the origin
of all the other manifestations of power: industrial production, eco-
nomic expansion and trade, agricultural productivity, artistic creativity, power of giving life and power of giving death. Conversely, the
multiplied analogy reverberates its violent masculine connotations
on the procreative act. The reproductive power is thus appropriated,
made male, and ultimately turned into its opposite: a power of destruction.
The perpetrator of this violence can only be a "mechanized" man
who, having jettisoned sentiments and lust for woman, is engaged in
a genital sexuality which aims solely at mechanical relief or reproduction:
L'immenso amore romantic0 e ridotto cosi unicamente alla conservazione della specie, e l'attrito delle epidermidi e finalmente liberato da
ogni mistero stuzzicante, da ogni pepe appetitoso e da ogni vanita dongiovannesca: semplice funzione corporale, come il bere e il mangiare.
L' uomo moltiplicato che noi sogniamo, non conoscera la tragedia
della vecchiaia! [TIF, 301)
The genesis of the multiplied man involves the introjection of the
empowering qualities of the machine-energy, precision, discipline
-and the expulsion (projectionon to the other)of weakening human
qualities-sensibility, sensualism, scepticism, pessimism. This logic
of exclusion culminates in the concept of the all-male creation: Marinetti's manifesto-preface to the novel Mafarka il futurista predicates
the birth of this Futurist superuomo upon the exclusion of woman
from the (prolcreative act. Having incited his "Futurist brothers" to
free themselves from the condition of "figli e schiavi miserevoli della
vulva" (TIF, 2551, the poet makes the following prophecy:
In nome delllOrgoglio umano che adoriamo, io vi annuncio prossima
l'ora in cui gli uomini dalle tempie larghe e dal mento d'acciaio figlieranno prodigiosamente solo con uno sforzo della loro volonta esorbitata, dei giganti dai gesti infallibili . . . Io vi annuncio che lo spirito dell'uomo e un'ovaia inesercitata . . . E noi lo fecondiamo per la prima
volta! [TIF, 255)
Thus, the Futurist discourse of destruction and creation foregrounds
gender only to exclude woman as subject in the act of male (prolcreation: the expenditure of the female principle serves the goal of masculinization of creative economy, and the erotic imagery conveys the
sense of excitement and pleasure projected in these fantasies of male
progress and mastery over nature.
It is important to keep in mind that Marinetti's metaphor of sexual
violence is the radical version of a very old phallic fantasy: to expose
or unveil and penetrate the secrets of nature. In her work on gender
and science, Evelyn Fox Keller has shown how the genderization of
knowledge (or science) as masculine and of nature as feminine is a
historically pervasive figure in Western
She has focused
in particular on Bacon's metaphor of knowledge as "chaste and lawful
marriage" (36)between mind and nature, which she sees as a prescient
vision of rational, "objective" thought in modern science ("a metaphor for power and domination, designed to safeguard the integrity
of the knower," 95). This vision of "a conjunction that remains forever disjunctive" [95),Keller argues, exposes the dual constitutive
motives underwriting the ambition to "objectivity": power and integrity of the subject. Pursuing the question of the emotional substructure from which the claim to objectivity grows, Keller explores the
linkage among the conceptions of autonomy, masculinity, objectivity, and power which emerge from the child's developing sense of self,
gender, and reality. She thus identifies "patterns of male and female
socialization that reproduce a sexualization of aggression, power, and
domination," lending force to the association of love with female
"impotence1' and of autonomy with male "power," aggression and
separation from the "otheru-maternal love first, then human others
and nature (114).In a footnote, the connection between these psychosocial premises and sexual violence is spelled out:
There is little question that the denial of interconnectedness between
subject and object serves to nullify certain kinds of moral constraint;
it allows for kinds of violation (even rape) of the other that would be
precluded by a respect for the relation between subject and object. At
the same time, however, it ought logically also serve as a protection
against forms of violence provoked by a relation between subject and
object that is experienced as threatening to the subject. (96; author's
emphasis)
This sociological explanation indirectly squares with Kristeva's psychoanalytical perspective. When promiscuity (chaos)explodes, destroying or threatening the "chaste and lawful marriage" between
subject and object, i.e., the subject's integrity and control, violence
also explodes-that very violence which marks the distance between
the Baconian metaphor and Marinetti's metaphor of violation and
rape. The latter entails, in fact, a display of power which hides a problematic relationship with the other, a sense of crisis that exacerbates
the need for control and the desire for domination.
Along this line of analysis we can pursue further the question of
the ideological underpinnings of the manifesto's aesthetic and epistemological model. The Futurist revolution is predicated upon the destruction of the old symbolic order by an explosion of rejuvenating
irrational forces. But the irrational is perceived as hiding feminineconnoted threats to identity, which the Futurist fiction of power tries
to ward off.
The clash between the fiction of power and the specter of
femininity/femininization is dramatized in "Uccidiamo il Chiaro di
Luna!": this second manifesto of the war against passeism, written
in the form of an allegorical tale, proclaims the unleashing of a pure,
violent destructive/creative energy ["grandi poeti incendiari," TIF,
14)against tradition (the "moribund populace" of the cities of Paralysis and Gout). The goal of the Futurist poets is to revitalize with
young blood the world which is "rotten with wisdom" [TIF, 16).To
accomplish the great Futurist project [symbolizedby the construction
of a military railroad to the flanks of the summit of the world), the
poets ally themselves with the forces of the irrational: the madmen
("quei Puri, lavati gia di ogni sozzura di logica," TIF, 19),unchained
wild beasts, and the unrestrained might of the ocean. Significantly,
the climactic moments of the narration are staged in Asia: the Futurists, after having launched a first attack against the decrepit European
world, enter into the cradle of civilization as if returning to the mother's ~ o m b . ~ " e r e they will finally build the emblems of their new
religion, means to the ultimate victory: the Futurist railroad and the
airplane. But before this can take place, an insidious, patently feminine threat hidden in the primitive scenario must be exorcised:
Ad un tratto, un grido altissimo lacero l'aria; un rumore si propago, tutti
accorsero . . . Era un pazzo giovanissimo, dagli occhi di vergine, rimasto
fulminato sul Binario. I1 suo cadavere fu subito sollevato. Egli teneva
fra le mani un fiore bianco e desioso, il cui pistillo s'agitava come una
lingua di donna. Alcuni vollero toccarlo, e fu male, poiche rapidamente,
con la facilita di un'aurora che si propaga sul mare, una verdura singhiozzante sorse per prodigio dalla terra increspata di onde inattese. Dal
fluttuare azzurro delle praterie, emergevano vaporose chiome d'innumerevoli nuotatrici, che schiudevano sospirando i petali delle lor0 bocche e dei lor0 occhi umidi. Allora, nell'inebbriante diluvio dei profumi,
vedemmo crescere distesamente intorno a noi una favolosa foresta, i
cui fogliami arcuati sembravano spossati da una brezza troppo lenta.
[. . .] Ma, mentre ci accanivamo, tutti, a liberar le nostre gambe e le nostre braccia dalle ultime liane affettuose, sentimmo a un tratto la Luna
carnale, la Luna dalle belle coscie calde, abbandonarsi languidamente
sulle nostre schiene affrante. (TIF, 21-22)
Electric light is created to kill the seductive moonlight ["l'antica
regina verde degli amori," TIF, 22), that is, to ward off the phantoms
of the irrational lurking from the depths of the enticing and terrifying
forest, so that the military Railroad can be built and a decisive attack
can be launched against the forces that resist progress. This resolution
clearly dramatizes the meaning of the Futurist mixture of primitive
and technological imagery: the unleashed irrational-a force which
can revitalize a decaying world-must be channeled into new protec-
tive and empowering structures-Railroad, airplane, electricity-to
exorcise the threats inherent to it. In the description of the battle, linguistic echoes point to a relationship between the fantasies aroused
by the moonlit scenario and the passions driving the Futurist aviators: the airplanes, in fact, are imaged as "deliziose amanti che nuotan0 [. . .] sull'ondeggiare dei fogliami" (TIF, 251, which brings back
to mind the seductive swimmers emerging "dal fluttuare azzurro
delle praterie." But in the war scene, potentially self-destructive
drives are turned into an attack against the enemy, "l'eterno nemico
che si dovrebbe inventare se non esistesse" (TIF, 16).
The machine provides the model for the new "estetica volitiva
della macchina" (TIF, 1911, that aesthetic of "splendore geometric0
e meccanico" and "sensibilita numerica" which Martinetti articulatd in a 1914 manifesto.24Far from being reducible to a naive enthusiasm for the marvels of modern technology, this aesthetic of the machine betrays a deep need for a new model of order, power, and
control: the search for a new all-male symbolic structure to restrain
the outbreak of the feminine-connoted irrational. The technological
wonderworks proposed as new aesthetic models are represented as
embodying tremendous energy and superhuman precision, and the
mechanical aesthetic denaturalizes man and reality, sublimating the
limits of the organic. The Futurist text would be a token of triumph
over these limits, in reaction against a culture which is perceived as
being infected by decadence and which is constantly associated with
images of biological decay.
Marinetti's manifestos on the Futurist syntactic revolution loudly
proclaim a will to clear the linguistic ground by destroying the barriers of traditional syntax and the old, introspective literary "I," in
order to open an infinite space for the "multiplied" individual-a man
above the limits of nature (time, space, emotions, and desires), able
to meet the challenges of modern reality. Woman is consistently coopted to construct this fiction of power and consistently erasedas subject. Ultimately, however, the representation of the feminine also
produces meanings in excess of that power, exposing the anxieties
that underwrite it. In fact, virulent misogyny, homophobia, and the
eroticization of violence add up to a paranoid self-definition, pointing
to the psychoanalytical tale hidden in the folds of the ideological fiction of power: the unexpressed anxieties about the boundaries of identity which recurrently cathect the blurring of gender difference.
NOTES
'Marjorie Perloff, TheFuturist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture [Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986) 85.
'It should be noted that Marinetti-the founder, leader, promoter, and manager of
the movement-is also to be credited with creating the new genre. In fact, he either
wrote or presided over the writing of most of the manifestos.
3Futurism was above all a new formula of Arte-azione intended to bridge the gap
between art and life: in Marinetti's own words, "una legge d'igiene mentale," "una giovane bandiera rinnovatrice, antitradizionale, ottimistica, eroica e dinamica, che si
doveva inalberare sulle rovine del passatismo /stat0 d'animo statico, tradizionale, professorale, pessimistico, passatista, nostalgico, decorativo ed esteta." See F. T. Marinetti, Guerra sola igiene del mondo, Teoria e invenzione futurista: Manifesti. Scritti
politici. Romanzi. Parole in liberta [hereafter TIF), ed. Luciano De Maria (1968; Milano: Mondadori, 1983) 235. Subsequent references to TIF appear in the text.
4See, for instance, "I1 Teatro di Varieta," TIF, 89-91.
'Marianne Martin's Futurist Art and Theory: 1909-1 915 [Oxford: Clarendon, 19681
may be cited as an example of the tendency to avoid ideological issues.
"uciano Caruso and Stelio M. Martini's "La fuga in avanti del futurismo" (Tavole
parolibere futuriste, eds. Caruso and Martini, 2 vols. [Napoli: Liguori, 19741 1: 1-7)
exemplifies such a mystifying approach to these issues: the Futurist linguistic revolution (the "liberation" of language from the referential/communicative function] is
elevated to "passo ulteriore sulla strada della liberazione della realta" 14).
'See F. T. Marinetti, "Trieste, la nostra bellapolveriera," TIF, 290: "Invocare la pace
dei popoli, non significa essere avveniristi, ma semplicemente castrare le razze e fare
una coltura intensiva della vilta."
'See F. T. Marinetti, "Contro i professori," TIF, 308: "Quando, quando si finira di
castrare gli spiriti che devono creare l'avvenire? Quando si finirl d'insegnare l'abbrutente adorazione di un passato insuperabile, ai ragazzi che si vogliono ridurre ad
altrettanti piccoli cortigiani sgobboni?"
' ~ a r i oCarli, "Arte vile e arte virile," Manifesti, proclami, interventi e documenti
teorici de1futurismo, ed. Luciano Caruso, 4 vols. (Firenze:Coedizioni Spes-Salimbeni,
1980) 2: 131.
"Caruso 2: 180.
"See Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men [New York: Columbia U P, 1985).
'*Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon Roudiez
(New York: Columbia U P, 1982).Subsequent page references will appear in parentheses following the passages cited.
13Corporealwaste refers to bodily fluids such as "menstrual blood and excrement,
or everything that is assimilated to them, from nail-parings to decay" (70).Kristeva
points out that corporeal waste "represents-like a metaphor that would have become
incarnate-the objective frailty of the symbolic order" (70).
14WalterBenjamin, in an often quoted passage, qualifies Marinetti's aestheticization of war as a paradigmatic example of an alienatedlalienating aesthetic sensibility,
which is instrumental to the economic structure of imperialistic capitalism. See his
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations, trans. Harry
Zohn [New York: Schocken Books, 1969) 241.
'"De Maria, in his introduction to TIF, points out the fundamental role played by
war in Futurist ideology, andnotes theinterweaving of war and eros in Marinetti's writing. However, he does not explore the latter issue in depth, and refers, instead, to Marinetti's own statement on the defensive function of eros [or, rather fecundation)in war
time: "Del resto lo stesso Marinetti chiari il nesso tra erotismo e polemologia futurista:
'Noi futuristi, barbari raffinatissimi, ma virilissimi [. . .]parliamo in nome della razza
che esige maschi accesi e donne fecondate. La fecondita, per una razza come la nostra,
6 , in caso di guerra, la sua difesa indispensabile' " (TIF,XLVI-XLVIII. Marinetti's eroticization of war has been emphasized, in particular, by Alice Kaplan, who views it as
an instance of the affinities between Futurist and fascist propaganda. See her "Futurism
and Fascism: Reflections on the 70th Anniversary of the Trial of Mafarka the Futurist,"
Yale Italian Studies 1.3 (1981):18.
16F.T. Marinetti, Taccuini 1915/1921 [Bologna:I1 Mulino, 1987)242. Subsequent
page references will be given in parentheses after the passages cited.
"See, for instance, the section "Bombardamento," in Zang Tum b Tumb (TIF, 775778).In these parole in liberta, the chaos of battle is figured as a cacophonic theatrical
performance and the triumphal march of the Futurist bombardment as a dominant leitmotif.
18Cf.Kaplan, "Futurism and Fascism" 47; Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986) 86. Kaplan's work is the single most important influence on my essay. I object, however, to
her reading of Marinetti as "the 'clean' fascist modernis[tIu (Reproductions 108),and
to her qualification of Futurism as "a fascist lobby" (Reproductions 75).I find the relationship between textual phenomena and dominant ideology more problematic, indirect, and diffuse.
1 9 ~ oardiscussion of the Lacanian concept of suture, its function in the development
of a logic of the signifier and in cinematic discourse, see Stephen Heath, "Notes on
Suture," Screen 18 (1977-1978): 48-76.
20L~igi
Peirone (Lostrumento espressivo di Marinetti [Genova: Tilgher, 19761 2728) notes that this mathematical logic is more rigid than the syntactical one.
"See Peirone 22-25, and leffrey Schnapp, "Politics and Poetics in Marinetti's Zang
Tumb Tuuum," Stanford Italian Review 5.2 (1985):75-92.
22EvelynFox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven and London:
Yale U P, 1985).Page references to this text will appear in parentheses following the
passages cited.
23Seethe following passage, a moment of the Futurists' journey to Asia: "Enrico
Cavacchioli sonnecchiava e sognava ad alta voce: '10 sento ringlovanire il mio corpo
ventenne! . . . l o ritorno, d'un passo sempre piu infantile, verso la mia culla . . . Presto,
rientrero nel ventre di mia madre! . . . Tutto, dunque, mi e lecito! . . . Voglio preziosi
gingilli da rompere. . . Citta da schiacciare, formicai umani da sconvolgere! . . . Voglio
addomesticare i venti e tenerli a guinzaglio . . . Voglio una muta di venti, fluidi levrieri,
per dar la caccia ai cirri flosci e barbuti' " (TIF, 181.
'See F. T. Marinetti, "Lo splendore geometric0 e meccanico e la sensibilita numerica," TIF, 98-107.